Writing on the wall for ‘alternative coalition’

TÁNAISTE Michael McDowell last night launched a vituperative attack on the Mullingar Accord parties claiming that Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell’s decision to remain in Brussels sent out a strong message that the writing was on the wall for the alternative coalition.

Mr McDowell, in the harshest political speech of this Dáil term, said the only conclusion that could be taken from recent opinion polls that the next government would be Fianna Fáil-led and that a Fine Gael-led coalition was “rapidly becoming a computational impossibility”.

He said that its strategists may predict an overall majority for Fine Gael but added that nothing was “as eloquent” as Mr Mitchell’s decision not to contest the election.

“The decision is fraught with foreboding for Fine Gael. Here is an experienced party representative who would have a claim on a senior ministry. He has opted instead to stay in Brussels. Better to be a small fish in a big pond than a big fish in no pond.”

The Tánaiste and PD leader ramped up his attack by making the extraordinary claim that Máiréad McGuinness’s decision to return from Brussels “may be taken more in the hope of succeeding Enda Kenny as party leader than ofserving him as a minister”.

Mr McDowell was speaking in Dublin last night at the launch of the McGill Summer School Book of Papers, edited by former RTÉ director of television Joe Mulholland.

Although the election is less than six months away, this is the first highly partisan and highly personalised party political attack that has been made since the party think-ins in September, aside from a couple of sideswipes directed at Pat Rabbitte during the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis.

Mr McDowell said that the evidence of recent opinion polls suggested that the election was shaping up into only one choice — which party can govern with Fianna Fáil?

“The electorate will have it in their power to grant that to my party, the Progressive Democrats. They may grant it to Labour. They may grant it to the Greens. And they may grant it to Sinn Féin.”

Speaking to reporters, he said that the preferred combination of the majority was a FF-PD Coalition.

“I am asking people to follow on the logic of their preference and give the PDs their vote,” he said.

“What happened in the last six weeks was that all the issues about (Bertie Ahern’s) Manchester payment were not the central issues. What people looked at was we could have a different government. And they rejected the Mullingar Accord.”